"But as a priest I'd do just the opposite. As soon as I felt an attraction starting I'd turn away from it. You learn to do that—to not think about something. It's different from saying, 'Don't think about a pink unicorn.' Instead you turn your mind away, you learn to not think about what you don't want to think about. Trust me, it can be done. And instead of looking for 'chance' meetings, you avoid contact except in the most public of situations. No tete-a-tetes or in-depth, one-on-one meetings, no lingering glances, no touches on the arm or shoulder. The key is to recognize the spark and douse it before it can ignite."
"Such a way to live. Pardon me, but it's unnatural."
"Tell me about it."
Celibacy hadn't been easy. How he'd ached for one particular woman, but he'd put his calling above that longing. Besides, she'd had her own vows. And nestled within him had been the hope that the new Pope might lift the ban on marriage for priests. But no one had heard from the Pope since last year.
Zev laughed. "The woman two nights ago, the one dressed like a prostitute who saved this sorry hide, for an instant there I thought, Father Joe and a prostitute ... ?"
"What did she look like?"
"Short dark hair, blue eyes, might have been prettier if she hadn't looked so haggard. I sensed she knew you. In fact I'm sure she did. The only way she knew me was because she'd seen me with you." He touched his chin. "Oh, yes. And she had a little scar right here. A tiny crescent."
Joe stopped walking. No. It couldn't be. "You could almost be describing ..." He shook his head. "No. Not dressed like that."
"Who were you thinking of?"
"One of the nuns. Sister Carole. She was.. . special."
Oh, was she ever. His heart lightened at just the thought of her.
"What? Someone was special to you and I know nothing? I thought we discussed everything."
Almost everything, Joe thought. But not this. Not Carole.
"She wasn't special just to me, she was special to everyone who knew her, or met however briefly. You would have taken to her, I know it. She was one of those people who lights up a room simply by entering it."
"Then your Sister Carole this was certainly not. Darken a room, that's what this one would do. This woman was very grim, frightening in a way; the only time she brightened was when she mentioned your name."
"No. My Carole—" He caught himself. "St. Anthony's Sister Carole, would have been out of town when the undead struck—back with her family in Pennsylvania."
He'd thought about her countless times since Good Friday.
She's safe ... I pray she's safe. She's too delicate, too sensitive for that kind of horror. She never would have survived.
"Since the mystery woman wasn't your paramour or your Sister Carole," Zev said, "I assume we can get back to priestly celibacy. I read once where priests had been allowed to marry until sometime during the Middle Ages. Why was that changed?"
"For financial reasons. Priests were accumulating wealthy estates and leaving them to their families instead of the Church. So one of the Popes instituted the no-marriage rule. It came around and bit the Church on its ass."
"Oy, did it ever."
"Yeah. The priesthood became attractive to too many who were ambiguous about their sexuality or to those who saw the Church as a sanctuary from their darker impulses; it wasn't. The impulses only became stronger. Seems to me that early entrance to a seminary interferes with normal maturation, and because of that you wind up with a percentage of priests with arrested sexual development."
Joe thanked God that he'd yielded to his vocation later in life. The love of God had always been strong in him, but he hadn't seen himself as a priest until after his graduation from Brooklyn College. The idea took hold and wouldn't let go. He'd entered the seminary at age twenty-three, but not as a virgin.
"The arrested types," he said, "they're the ones who became pedophiles, and their presence tainted the rest of us. We all got smeared with the same brush. Look at me. I'm a prime example."
"No one who knows you," Zev said, "believed a word of that."
"Didn't matter. As soon as something like that gets out, you're ruined. Guilty or innocent, who you are and whatever good you've done is canceled out." He ground his teeth. "The only feeling I've ever experienced looking at a child was the desire to see him or her grow into a God-loving adult."
Zev put a hand on his arm. "I know, Joe. I know."
They walked on in silence.
ZEV . . .
Eventually they turned west and made their way inland, finding Route 70 and following it into Ocean County via the Bridle Bridge.
"I remember nightmare traffic jams right here every summer," Joe said as they trod the bridge's empty span. "Never thought I'd miss traffic jams."
They cut over to Route 88 and followed it toward Lakewood. Along the way they found a few people out and about in Bricktown, furtively scurrying between houses. They walked a gauntlet of car dealerships, the stock sitting dirty and idle in the lots beneath waving pennants, the broken showroom windows carrying signs promising deals that would never be closed.
Zev noticed how Joe's steps seemed to grow heavier with every mile. But he had to show him something that would make his steps—and his heart— even heavier.
At the corner of New Hampshire Avenue, he turned them south.
"But it's shorter this way," Joe said, pointing down 88.
"I know. But we'll end up in the same spot, and along the way there's something you must see."
They trod the undulating pavement until they came to a baseball field, the former home of the Lakewood Blue Claws.
Joe smiled. "This brings back memories. Remember the games we used to go to?"
"I do," Zev said. The Blue Claws, a class-A minor league team, maybe, but those games had been fun. The stadium even served Kosher food. "But what I want to show you here, baseball's got nothing to do with."
"I don't think I like the sound of that." Joe pointed to the unusual number of gulls and crows circling the field. "And I know I don't like the look of that."
Zev knew as they climbed the grassy slope to the fence that whatever uneasy premonitions Joe was feeling, even the worst he could imagine would leave him unprepared for the sight that awaited him on the other side.
He remembered his recent look onto the playing field. At first he hadn't been sure what he was seeing: a huge pile of blackened debris occupying most of the diamond and spreading into the outfield. Then he'd started picking out limbs and torsos, and there, piled high where home plate used to be . .. skulls. Innumerable skulls.
Joe stared at the charred, rotting mounds for maybe ten seconds, then closed his eyes and swallowed.
"What in the name of God .. . ?"
"Hardly in the name of God," Zev said. "On those first few nights of the invasion they committed wholesale slaughter. They loosed a horde of bestial creatures—undead, yes, but only vaguely human—who beheaded their prey after drinking their blood. A way to keep down the undead population, I assume. It makes sense that they wouldn't want too many of their kind concentrated in one area. Like too many carnivores in one forest—when the herds of prey are wiped out, the predators starve. And just to make sure none of those early victims would be rising from the grave, they brought their bodies and their heads here, soaked them with kerosene, and struck a match."
"Jesus".
"Him I doubt had much to do with it either. They fed the fire for days, the smoke dirtied the sky. And when the wind blew the wrong way—oy. Even now ..." He sniffed the air. "Luckily we're upwind."
"But they were also killing off their future food supply."
"Enough of us they left to hunt down and feed on, but far too few to offer resistance of any consequence."